During cataract surgery, the patient lens is removed and replaced by a fix plastic lens, which deprives the patient of accommodation capabilities. Intraocular lens (IOL) implants are mostly developed to replace a lens from patients that suffer from cataract. This surgery operation prevents the patient from going blind and many inventions have been developed to provide to the patient the capability of focusing on objects at various distances from the eye.
Usually, the focusing capability for a healthy person is about 15 m−1, meaning a focus from infinity to about 6 cm. This range may reduce as the patient ages down to few m−1, or diopters.
IOL implants have been developed primarily to replace the patient lens at one fixed focus. Such an implant is folded and inserted in the lens cavity through a tubular means in order to reduce as much as possible the size of the corneal incision. However, such inventions may be limited because patient is only recovering vision at a given focus. Therefore the patient is unable to focus on objects at various distances.
Variable focusing IOL implants have been developed. Many of variable focusing IOL implants are based on the capability of the patient to use the eye's ciliary muscles to vary the focus and, thus, actuate the IOL implant instead of the eye's original lens. Such variable focusing IOL implants may vary the focus by a mechanical displacement of a fixed focus lens, or a lens deformation.
Variable focusing may also be performed using microfluidic means. In such IOL implants, a fluid may be injected from a reservoir into the optical path to deform the interface and, thus, change the optical power of the IOL implant. In such devices, the fluid reservoir may also be connected to the ciliary muscles. Therefore, implying that the ciliary muscles will still have the strength to actuate the device. This is not always the case for patients after a certain age, and especially for patients suffering from presbyopia.
Recently, Varioptic has described an IOL implant based on electrowetting actuation and made of two immiscible liquids on an insulating and hydrophobic surface (see WO2007107589). The IOL implant is encapsulated in a foldable structure, such that the device may be folded during the implantation process. However, the fluids used in the IOL device, and how to fold the device without disturbing the liquids confinement has been previously undisclosed.
One object of the present disclosure is to provide an IOL implant capable of being folded and unfolded during the implantation process thus minimizing the ocular incision without disturbing the performance of the IOL device.